nothing pisses me off more than mundane annoyances (g2)

During this time, I was hoping the only stress I would be suffering would be gaining mastery of my new job now that I’m solo.

I never seem to get off that easily.

We’re still immersed in summer, which can only be summed up as funky, wet stank. So of course, our AC at home has been hit by lightning.

Then, as Spawn is starting school online, I have a neighbor who decided to play with a chainsaw and tear up some wires along the way.

Problem 1 is denied by the warranty company as an act of God, coverage denied. Fine, I have insurance but I need something in writing as to the problem so they can move forward.

The only thing they send me in writing is some bullshit that the AC wasn’t working before the contract in effect. Excuse me, what the fuck?

I don’t know about the rest of you, maybe it’s because I have no one to allocate some of the bullshit of life too…but I have gone beyond my limit of the incompetence, fraud, swindling, lying, cheating and all out fuckery that corporate America calls “customer service.”

What I’m saying is I want to burn this fucking company to the ground and the idiot handling my case with it.

Its now been almost a month of stank heat and suffering. I had to break down to buy a portable unit to make at least Spawn’s days less like hell. Their the ones suffering the most being at home all day.

Problem 2 is the internet. We didn’t know when we moved in we had a dickhead next door, didn’t notice his tiny penis, big truck, “trespassers will be shot” sign nor the fenced in German Shepard right next to the closest pole for both power and internet. It took four visits and a supervisor call to finally get one of those technical badasses who sees every problem as having a solution.

Now that Chainsaw Charlie is on the scene, we’re back to square one and already had one visit from technician ThumbUpHisAss who blew it off and said to call when the construction was done. What construction, you lazy fuck?

There are so many people out of work, why must dead weight hinder progress from those who can and will do? While those who won’t just waste time and space?

So being able to write means sitting in almost 90 degree room with no internet and no breeze. The storms are still going and I am so pissed I could really make a long list of people I’d love to hurt. I have zero empathy anymore and have lost my faith in karma.

When you’re the common man, the one who has never had the power of a retainer, or even a little bit of influence against large overbloated corporations who believe sending mass amounts of survey links asking to rate their customer service instead of actually providing any, what do you do?

In the grand scheme of things, I know my bitching is petty but at the same time, why does this little shit, this insignificant crap have to be blown to immense proportions just to get basic fucking common sense out these greedy sacks of shit? Provide the service you claim to do, that’s all!

With that in mind, I guess it’s really no wonder why no one can figure out how viruses work or why masks are essential or just even, wash your fucking hands?

We cannot even extend common decency and fairness when paid to.

diet vanilla yogurt (g2)

OK, so first impressions… I will never make any real close personal friendships here. At all. This job is in a very tiny town, owned by a very large family …

can you start tomorrow? (g2)

I have been registered with one recruitment firm for over ten years. They are supposedly experts in my particular field. In those ten years, I’d yet to be sent on …

i wanna be a ninja, until i tried it (g2)

My state is desperately trying to get things back to the old version of normal. It’s been fighting to embrace how not to spread disease while reopening the workforce. Needless …

what’s your greatest achievement? (g2)

I tend to feel like this is a loaded question. It seems asinine if I say AND if I don’t say, my children, for example. Saying Spawn is my achievement …

what’s really valued? (g2)

I fear that the intelligence will lose to the commerce. That those who know its too soon to return back to work will be hazed as slackers not doing their …

you really have to hate your home life to want to rage kill to leave it (g2)

I try to stay somewhat up on current events, especially considering they are so badly affecting my livelihood. Though by the time this is posted, this is probably history, but …

do you have any regrets? (g2)

Another gem from the common list of tough questions asked during a job interview. It’s completely a dumbfuck question. Its completely loaded. No matter how you respond, you’re a dick. …

what’s your biggest weakness? (g2)

Although the answer to this question is rather easy and there are several, they are all definitely not ones I can say during an interview. I am honest, and I …

you’re on the shortlist (g2)

I’ve had five phone interviews over the course of two days and I would have preferred to go back to my old shit job and work two solid weeks with …

pedophile (g2)

I’m always late with media, but it always gets me on some random thought process that I either hyperfocus on until something else comes along or I purge it here. …

why do you want to work here? (g2)

The bottom line… I don’t. I’d like to win the lottery… Unfortunately, I’d have to see it as not a waste of time and actually buy a ticket. No one …

how do you handle stress? (g2)

Bitch, I drink! Like a fish! Get me a Guinness! Ok, so definitely not something to say during an interview. Although the temptation is IMMENSE! If people believed half the …

welcome to the first reboot of star trek, spawn (g2)

Ok, since I was a very little kid, I have been a trekkie. I remember my young mind wondering what shade of girlfriend Kirk was going to get that day. …

sometimes you have to burrow (g2)

I have barely spoken to a soul in the last couple years. I find it troublesome when I get the feeling from a new person that they wish to spark …

so my asshole friend got me into fish (g2)

My former co-worker and friend brought a betta to work not long after I started. I thought the idea was stupid as fuck… why in god’s name would you bring …

butt paper, the saga (g2)

With the hoarding and noise, I’m even hearing people here in the states trying to track down toilet paper to send to friends and family in Italy, Spain and those hit the hardest and on lockdown or quarantine.

Out of curiosity, I searched on Amazon to see what was available. At that very moment, the only toilet paper in stock, was this one and one other style of the same theme.

I checked again the next day and obviously Amazon is doings its best to get stuff back in stock. There was more in stock, though some is gouging either in price or shipping charges… but the trump butt paper was cheaper than the new options… and yet, its not selling like the others… Do people feel like his campaign will benefit by purchasing it? Do they feel idiocy is contagious? Do they just not want that face near any holes on their person, even the stinkiest?

cleaning (g2)

I gave the blog a little facelift.  I needed it. I needed the words bigger and clearer, and something… different.

I removed things we weren’t really using and I’m trying to figure out how to expand on things I wish to see used more. Comments and constructive criticism most certainly welcome.

oops, so i do it again… (g2)

I have been, for lack of a better word, so immersed into the bullshit of life that the last month has been the last real breath I’ve been able to …

lost my job, need to move, no clue wtf to do and scared shitless (g2)

Well… I feel rather dumb for complaining about things right now, but then again I kind of have to purge it. I have my health, which somehow managed to avoid the death flu and several stomach bugs, I have a great kid who will be going to an advanced art program this summer. My depression has not, so far, kicked into gear. However, I feel like I’m just strong enough to keep that below a crust… for now.

I even have a landlord who tried to give me his rent back when I told him I’d lost my job and said he’d support me getting moved if that is what I felt I needed to do.

End of March, not long after my fifth anniversary, I came into work expecting to have the same soul-sucking experience that is has been over 90% of the time I’ve been there. I’d been training a new manager on how to do everything I did (plotting for a smooth exit), most of which fell back to me as they were getting overwhelmed. They helped field some of the calls and emails coming in, but now we had two of us drowning rather than just me.

But I’ve been there the longest. And I work for a company that epitomizes every single article I’ve ever read about toxic environments. I get no information, no communication, but then am reprimanded when my responses to those outside are “too vague” and not “resolution-driven.” It’s really no wonder that the company itself has had to change names over the course of “twenty years” it likes to brag its been in business. By law, you have to shut down when you report a loss too many years in a row.

The VP… again, not my superior… but is the right-hand to one of the owners….calls me into a conference room around lunch. Everyone is gone and the only other person there is the HR manager.

The writing is on the wall.

“Huh, am I being let go?”

I’m being told yes, and they ask if they need to go over why. I say “I don’t see the point,” and go through the list of where to find anything they might need, forward my phone to the new manager, pack my things in a very small bag (all while being offered a large box several times and professing I don’t need it). I tell them its not like I’m going to disappear so if they can’t find something, just contact me.

It was so surreal.

I’ve never been fired.

I hate this place, but I busted my ass for over five years, and now… fired?

I get in my car and take one last look at the building I feel like I have wasted a chunk of my life on and realize… I NEVER have to come back here…

I realize I’m smiling about this idea.

I realize that I’m so stubborn and have been such a closet optimist that this shithole might actually get better that this might have been just what I needed to leave and make the changes I’ve wanted to make.

I don’t even unfriend the VP on facebook, though she does get moved to the restricted group.

I talk it over with Spawn and let them know what happened and we talk about moving… like… now.

Thirteen years of life to clean out, toss, donate, sell… and so so much. Every time I think we might have gotten through one room, I find yet another box, stash of papers etc.

I would even be grateful if that was the most stressful part.

I’m jobless.

Yes, they are paying me an additional month and told me to file for unemployment (which I’ve yet to see, so apparently I did something wrong). I socked away my tax refund rather than pay anything off or blow it and I have a 401k and a money market investment account I can pull from if I feel like buying a house… a modest house, but a house nonetheless.

I’m ok.

But I don’t feel ok.

I feel on the edge of freaking out.

Every time I’ve ever moved, I’ve usually had a friend or family to stay with until I got settled. And this time, I do have a cousin in the area, but neither of us are the type to share space unless we have to… holidays and that sort of thing. Three days is the expiration.

I’m sure the wife if dodging me when I’m up there for interviews so I don’t ask to move in with them for awhile. But the truth is, I’d live in my car and lie about it before I’d even ask.

It killed me to even tell them I was out of work. They are the pair with which I feel like I’m being graded whenever I’m around them and to ask for advice…. was an intensely hard thing for me to do. They know the area, they might have tips and places I would not think to look. And my cousin, did  have contacts at a couple of the staffing agencies, both of which has sadly done nothing for me.

I’m also prideful as hell. Every time I’ve been through something stressful: divorce, poverty,  a death of someone close to me, I shut out the world and maybe talk about it once I’ve resolved it.

But when you have a kid at stake, you have to put on that face of adulting as though you know what the fuck you’re doing when in truth, we’re all still those kids inside and figuring shit out only when we fuck it up. And when you have a kid at stake and their well-being, you get help wherever you think it might happen no matter how much of a prick your pride tells you to be instead.

I know… I know, logically, we will be fine. It’s been 3 weeks, I’ve submitted to over 90 openings, been in one 3 hour interview doing something I’ve never done before, but was eager over the prospect of learning something new, in spite of the long hours. They won’t decide until the 15th of next month, so I’d prefer not to wait. I’ve had a few other promising phone interviews, but its just not happening as fast as I would like it.

I’m really fucking good at what I do, and when I’m not, I’m very independent about figuring it out. I own my mistakes, I’m as honest as I can be within professional constraints. Hire me, dammit!

But then you also start house hunting, and they tell you to get pre-approved, but then they tell you you won’t qualify if you’re not employed… a friend advised just getting up there in the first cheap postage stamp I could rent, and then start looking and this way I would be available for interviews… which sounds great!… until I look at the daily cost. It’s HUGE and its like NO ONE wants to give you a deal for maybe a month. They are hell bent on locking you in for a year or more.

I want as much as possible to buy a real house.

Spawn wants a real house.

I want a real house.

This is where Spawn wants to finish school.

I don’t have much time before Spawn realizes that living with their parent is just not the way they want to do it forever. So before that period, I want them to have the house I’ve never been able to offer so they can decorate and do and make it, into everything they ever dreamed. I want that too.

But first, I want work… or I want both… or I want to not have to worry about both…I don’t know.

What if I’m just not enough for any of this? The last thing I want is my stress to become Spawn’s stress. I wish I knew what to do…